Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is widely used in integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing for planarizing surfaces of semiconductor wafers at various stages of fabrication. CMP equipment includes a wafer holder, commonly known as a head, which rotates and translates a wafer to be polished while pressing it against a consumable polishing pad, which is also rotating. A polishing slurry, typically an aqueous suspension of abrasive particles and chemicals, is dispensed onto the polishing pad during wafer polishing. A conditioning block, typically possessing an abrasive surface, moves across the polishing pad surface during wafer polishing, removing polishing debris and worn polishing pad material from the polishing pad to maintain a fresh polishing pad surface. Achieving a uniform polished layer of material, for example silicon dioxide, on a wafer surface is commonly hampered by non-uniform IC layer thicknesses on wafers incoming to a CMP operation. As a polishing pad is used for polishing multiple wafers, the pad thickness profile changes due to removal of pad material by the polishing block, resulting in constantly changing polishing rates across wafer surfaces, which produces varying IC layer thickness profiles across each wafer and from wafer to wafer.